My kids are ridiculously adventurous eaters (their favorites right now are stuffed mushrooms with crabmeat, and beef empanadas!) but tonight my husband cooked a delicious and easy dinner using ground turkey. Literally all you do is buy a pack of lean ground turkey meat, and cook it in a skillet or a wok with some garlic and onions. We added some marinara sauce and ate it over whole-wheat shell pasta. Broccoli on the side, which my kids love but I guess most don't. One pack of turkey meat easily feeds our family of four, and my kids and their friends love it. It's pretty healthy too. We also sometimes melt American or cheddar cheese over ground turkey, which is less healthy but just as good.

Adam
Married to Billy, daddy to Noah (8) and Sophia (4).
Hoping and praying for baby #3 within the next year:
Boy: Jude Thomas
Girl: Eliza Jane or Ramona Jane...maybe.

Ooh, look forward to cooking some of these (and posting when it isn't so late here), but my friend's mother used to to blend/process handfuls of spinach down and add it to spaghetti/tomato sauce in order to sneak veggies onto the kids' plates. She never mentioned if it much altered the color, but they ate it down on pasta none the wiser...

My almost 4 year old's favourite meal for the last 2+ years has been lentils and rice: I don't have a precise recipe but this is roughly what I cook:
Saute 1 x finely chopped onion in olive oil. When softened, add finely diced carrot (and/or celery, capsicum or other vegies of choice).Add 1-2 cups red lentils (depending on quantity of vegies and personal preference for proportions), 1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste and water and low salt stock. You can just keep checking and adding water as needed. I ususally season with cumin, ginger and pepper, then cover and simmer until lentils are soft.
Serve with boiled rice. I often make up a big batch and then freeze individual portions (including rice) in the freezer, It defrosts and microwaves well.

My 10 month old's fave meal is cheesy pasta: again I don't have a precise recipe but roughly this:
Saute 1/2 a chopped onion in olive oil, add 4 medium carrots chopped in thick coins and 2 cans of tomatoes (or cook, peel etc your own toms if you are a purist). Season with basil, oregano and pepper then cover and simmer until the carrots are soft. Allow to cool a little, puree then stir through a few handfuls of grated cheese; cheddar, colby etc or split half/half with mascarpone or cream cheese etc.
For my little one I mix through cooked star or alphabet pasta (any little pasta, that you would put in sooup) but for bigger kids I would use bigger pasta like penne or shells.

My little boy loves it when we make faces with his vegetables. So for lunch most days he has cruskits or multi-grain with cream cheese and capsicums, cucumber, olives, tomato, celery, avocado and carrots, all made to look like a person. He enjoys making lunch with me and designing different faces...it takes a while but he loves his veggies this way and he is incorporated in the "cooking" process.

Another thing I have been giving him during the summer is frozen fruit pops. I make different juices, orange, apple, berry, carrot etc. (I'm a huge fan of my juicer but obviously you can use store brought juice as well) and pour them into moulds (I use silicon cake molds in all different shapes) and put grapes and berries and chopped apple, mango, kiwi and melons into the juice. I then just stick a icy pole stick in the top and freeze. I have use icy pole molds before but my 2 year old never seems to get through the whole thing and we end up in a mess so the cake molds are much smaller, but not too small and easier to eat. The juice doesn't go as hard as frozen water so it mushes quite easily. Frozen fruit pops are enjoyed by me and my husband as well

They are both pretty basic and not really what I'd call recipes but they seem to work a treat for us, and our little boy has always been disinterested when it comes to eating! I have some others but I'll have to dig up the recipes!

Last edited by goldielocks; January 20th, 2013 at 07:58 AM.

Mama to Bugsy William, Jem Richmond and another munchkin, due August 2015.